The Wormhole in the Closet

Carstairs hesitated.

If his logic was correct, the wormhole entrance would be behind the closet door. If he was wrong, opening the door could lead to the end of everything.

He reached out and touched the door, feeling the glossy smoothness of its painted surface. Why here? he wondered. Why now? Most importantly, why me? He had never asked for this responsibility. He was a county bureaucrat, to give his job a generous description. He had never given much thought to the universe, and its strange mutations. He lived in his own small universe: his basement apartment, his office, the small town in which both were located. The most complicated part of his life was choosing which tie to wear, and he had never doubted that outside his door was outside and inside his door was inside. His route to work lay on a series of streets that could be and were easily mapped. Randomness did not happen. It was an existence that had satisfied him for some twenty years. And suddenly, as he was two-thirds of the way to retirement, as the gray hairs on his head began to outnumber the brown, as his joints began to make their presence known, he had been thrust into the quantum mist that permeated space and time.

Carstairs toyed with the door handle. It's shiny surface showed a distorted reflection of his fingers. He withdrew his hand. Nothing required him to go on. He could turn his back and move away. The strange predictions might not be true. He might simply return to his routine and find himself in his low-ceilinged bedroom, puzzling sleepily over a selection of neckties. No one knew. And if the universe was really to end, whatever that meant, he would be no worse off than everyone else. And there would be no time for regrets.

On the other hand, if he opened the door and found the solution, if he essentially saved the universe as we know it, no one would know. He would get even less recognition then he got now from his quotidian tasks in the county office building, tasks he completed diligently without ever wondering why.

Carstairs hesitated. The universe waited.

***

William Brasse is the author of three novels published by Rough Magic Press. His short fiction has appeared in The Southern Review and several other publications. He is also a playwright, and his short play, "Making the Cut," was awarded an honorable mention in ThinkingFunny23.